Maybe some Americans were serious when they threatened they would move to Canada if Republican presidential candidate became successful in his often polarizing campaign for the White House.

Canada's main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night as Trump took the lead in several major states and his prospects for winning the U.S. presidency turned markedly higher.

Some users in the United States, Canada and Asia saw an internal serve error message when trying to access the www.cic.gc.ca/ website.

Canada's main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night (pictured) as Trump took the lead in several major states

Officials for the ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website's problems were noted by many on Twitter

After some Americans, often jokingly, said they would move to Canada if Trump was elected, the idea has been taken up by some Canadian communities.

In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada's Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Trump capture the White House.

Joel Sandaluk, an immigration lawyer from Toronto, said the volume of inquiries to his office had ‘noticeably increased’ in recent months.

‘We got more around the time of the Republican convention. It’s slowed down a little bit. There's always an interest in leaving the country if it seems your country is on a path that doesn’t please you,’ he told USA Today.

Mr Sandaluk outlined the various legal routes to Canada, such as management consultant, dentist and disaster relief insurance claims adjuster; enrolling in a university degree program; having a skill that is desperately needed in a certain area of the country; or having a Canadian ancestor.

Google, meanwhile, reported huge spikes for search terms such as 'emigrate' and 'how to emigrate to Canada' as Trump's votes poured in.